Virtual Power Plant Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing peaked in 2020 at 8 records, then fell sharply — 2021's 8 filings dropped to 0 by 2024, a complete reversal in three years.
- One assignee leads with 6 records, but the ranked field of 11 companies drops to a long tail with a single filing at tenth place.
- H02J and G06Q dominate the class mix, covering 57.1% and 47.6% of the 21 records respectively, while AI-based control (G06N) sits at just 19.0%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (8 records) with 2024 (0) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field.
What this landscape covers
Virtual power plant aggregation sits at the intersection of grid control and software platform claims: patents in this set describe how distributed assets — batteries, EV chargers, demand-response loads — are pooled, dispatched and settled as a single tradable resource. The search combines core VPP and aggregator-platform terminology with specific technical friction points: baseline estimation, portfolio optimization, telemetry requirements, dispatch latency, setpoint tracking accuracy and asset heterogeneity. That combination narrows the corpus to documents that engage with how aggregation actually works under load, not just the concept of pooling assets.
21 published records fall within scope, spanning 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years understate true filing activity and should be read as provisional rather than a decline.
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Filing trend and technology composition
The two views below use the same 21-record base: one tracks filings by year, the other breaks the corpus down by IPC subclass so that overlapping claim areas are visible side by side.
Filing activity, 2017–2026
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 8 in 2020, held near that level through 2021, then fell to 0 by 2024 — a -100% swing over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under the publication lag and should not be read as a continued drop.
IPC subclass composition
H02J (power supply and grid systems) appears in 57.1% of the 21 records and G06Q (business/commerce data processing) in 47.6%, confirming that most filings pair grid-control hardware claims with a commercial dispatch or settlement layer. Control systems (G05B) and AI-based methods (G06N) each sit at 19.0%, and optical/holography/image-processing classes (G02B, G03H, G06T) each cover 14.3% — likely incidental co-classification rather than a distinct VPP sub-field.
Shares are the percentage of the 21 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Virtual Power Plant Aggregation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about virtual power plant aggregation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
US12579588B2 — Method and system utilizing one or more virtual power plant capacity units
Describes a price-time-priority queue for virtual power plant and connected grid aggregation: the method receives origin and destination location data, generates nodal power networks from that data, and determines virtual power plant hubs — including a first hub tied to origin and a second tied to destination — along the transmission route, then receives power device data to complete the dispatch loop.Filed by CirclesX LLC, published 2026-03-17.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20210318132A1 | Multi-Dimension Classification Object Matrices to Estimate Multi-Dimensional Representations with Multi Funct… | 58 |
| 2 | US20210304306A1 | Stochastic Bidding Strategy for Virtual Power Plants with Mobile Energy Storages | 34 |
| 3 | US20220004307A1 | Virtual Power Plant Optimization Method and System | 20 |
| 4 | US20220004308A1 | Multi-Dimension Information Service Helmet Method and System | 18 |
| 5 | US11416936B1 | Systems and methods for managing a renewable power asset | 16 |
| 6 | WO2026024918A1 | Ai-based energy edge platforms, systems, and methods | 10 |
| 7 | GB2593524A | System for demand response coordination across multiple asset pools | 8 |
| 8 | WO2021191453A1 | System for demand response coordination across multiple asset pools | 4 |
| 9 | US11740777B2 | Multi-dimension information service helmet method and system | 3 |
| 10 | GB202004421D0 | System for demand response coordination across multiple assest pools | 3 |
Citation counts reflect the searched corpus only and favour older filings; treat them as a signal of influence, not of current commercial weight.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the filing trend, the assignee ranking and the class mix are read together.
The 2020–2021 filing wave has not been sustained
Filings climbed to a peak of 8 in 2020 and held at 8 in 2021, then fell to 0 by 2024 — the complete reversal the hero card shows. Given the 18-month publication lag, 2025–2026 counts are still incomplete, so this should be read as a plateau after an early wave rather than a proven long-term decline.
One clear leader, then a fast drop to single-filing entrants
The ranked field covers 11 companies. The leader holds 6 records, fifth place holds 2, and tenth place holds just 1 — a steep drop-off rather than a broad, evenly-spread field. New entrants are filing against a leader with meaningfully more coverage, not against a crowded middle.
Grid control and commercial dispatch claims are paired, not separate
H02J covers 57.1% of the 21 records and G06Q covers 47.6%, and given that a record can carry multiple classes, most filings likely combine a grid-hardware claim with a bidding, settlement or portfolio-optimization layer in the same document. Filers targeting only the software layer, or only the hardware layer, are working in a thinner slice of this corpus.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to virtual power plant aggregation, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked field spans utility research institutes, grid equipment majors and software-first aggregator platforms — three quite different filing postures inside the same 21-record set.
CirclesX leads on aggregator-platform claims
The representative filing US12579588B2 shows the pattern: price-time-priority queues, nodal power networks and virtual hub definitions built around location data rather than a specific hardware asset class.
State Grid-affiliated institutes file jointly, not solo
The strongest co-assignee pairs in this dataset all involve the same Wuhan energy-efficiency evaluation institute paired with sibling State Grid research bodies, pointing to internally coordinated filing rather than competitive overlap.
Latest-year activity is thin and split
Only Strong Force EE Portfolio and one Chinese grid-technology filer show any activity in the latest year, each with a single filing. That is consistent with the broader plateau in the filing trend rather than a new wave of entrants.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| STRONG FORCE EE PORTFOLIO 2022 LLC | 1 | 0% |
| NARI Technology Co., Ltd. | 1 | — |
| SIMPSX TECHNOLOGIES LLC | 0 | — |
| CENTRICA BUSINESS SOLUTIONS BELGIUM NV | 0 | — |
| Form Energy Inc. | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. | 0 | — |
| State Grid Electric Power Research Institute Wuhan Energy Efficiency Evaluation Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| State Grid Electric Power Research Institute Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The filing trend and class composition point to specific next steps for a team deciding where to file or where to watch.
Track the 2025–2026 filings as they publish
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true trajectory after the 2020–2021 peak will only be visible once these years finish filling in.
Monitor filings in Eureka →Map the co-assignee network in full
The six co-assignee pairs in this dataset suggest coordinated filing among a subset of institutes; a full network view would clarify how much of the leader's count is internally distributed.
Explore assignee networks →Pressure-test the under-claimed branches
Telemetry standardization and dispatch-latency compensation sit inside this search scope but carry thin direct coverage — worth a targeted claim-scope check before filing.
Run a white space search →Common questions on this landscape
This dataset finds 21 published records in scope between 2015 and the 2026-07-31 cut-off, drawn from a search combining core VPP and aggregator-platform terms with technical friction points like baseline estimation and dispatch latency. That is a narrow, technically-filtered count rather than every filing that mentions virtual power plants broadly. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years of this count will rise as more filings publish.
The ranking covers 11 companies total, ranging from software-first aggregator platforms to grid equipment majors and state-affiliated research institutes. The leader holds 6 records against a field that drops to 2 by fifth place and just 1 by tenth place — a steep concentration at the top with a long tail of single-filing entrants. This is the full ranking the dataset returns, not a top-50 or top-100 cut.
Filings rose from 0 in 2017 to a peak of 8 in 2020, held at 8 in 2021, and had fallen to 0 by 2024 — a -100% change over that three-year span. That looks like a sharp pullback, but 2025 and 2026 data are still incomplete under the normal 18-month publication lag, so it is safer to describe 2020–2021 as a filing wave that has not yet been confirmed to continue, rather than to call the field currently in decline.
Power supply and grid systems (H02J) appear in 57.1% of the 21 records and business/commerce data processing (G06Q) in 47.6%, and since records can carry multiple IPC classes, most filings likely pair a grid-control claim with a commercial dispatch or settlement layer in the same document. Control systems and AI-based methods each sit at 19.0% of records, a smaller but present share worth watching as automated dispatch matures.
US12579588B2, assigned to CirclesX, claims a price-time-priority queueing method for virtual power plant and grid aggregation built around nodal power networks and origin/destination-based virtual hubs. Anyone building a location-aware dispatch queue or hub-definition method for aggregated assets should read its claims closely before finalizing an architecture. It does not appear to cover baseline estimation or telemetry standardization directly, which remain more open areas in this dataset.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.